A wrong start

Do relationships need to start well to pursue into a strong relationship? One of my friends says that if it’s doomed from the start, there’s no chance it can turn into a great one after. But what is doomed, and what should we consider as a bad start?

R., 34, told me her relationship with her husband didn’t start so well. “We met at the restaurant where he invited me. I was shy, he was embarrassed, and the conversation was a little bit awkward. Both of us were nervous. We said stupid things and didn’t know what to say to each other. I was already thinking in my head it will never work and that we should stop there, but then, the waiter dropped his tray full of glasses on him, and we couldn’t stop laughing. We ended up the dinner on that laughing note, and we decided to give our relationship a go afterwards. We got married last year” she said.

C., 35, said that her first date with her husband was a disaster until the end of the evening. “We knew each other before, but we were just friends, until once, he invited me to his place. He tried to cook us a little meal, but he is a terrible cook. When I ate the first bite of it, I felt forced to swallow it just not to disappoint him. It was awful, I never ate something so disgusting in my life. The conversation was also a disaster. He couldn’t find his words, he tried to make some jokes, but he didn’t make me laugh. When I was preparing to leave him, he just said  “please stay” and it just made me unable to resist” she said.

T., 35, said that they waited a whole year until getting together. “We were not supposed to be together. We were engaged with other people when we met, and the meeting was purely professional. Yet, during that meeting, we felt there was something between us. But we never admitted it. He took the initiative to pursue me afterwards, but in a very discrete and subtle way. It was difficult because I had remorse leaving my partner and tons of reservations about us. I eventually yielded to his advances, because I realized I had fallen in love with him, deeply and madly” she said.

Nothing is perfect in this world. So, when everything seems too perfect, there should be some warning signs too. “I prefer a relationship that starts with little bumps on the road than a relationship that starts like if you were in a dream. I once dated a guy who was everything I could hope for, nice, intelligent, caring and romantic. And it turned out he was also playing the serenade to another woman” J., 37, said.

So, if a date doesn’t start well, would you run away or would you consider pursuing it?

Glitter and trauma

Is it really possible to have a sustainable relationship with someone who’s not from the same background than we? I remember once a TV documentary about a woman who met her rich husband in a club, and who described her life as a fairy tale with her playing the role of Cinderella. She came from a modest background, and accepted to live with him in the United States, in his lavish villa. She said she felt happy but yet, she was seeing a therapist.

I believe it’s not easy saying goodbye to your old life, where you have all your references, to embrace a new life induced by the one we love. But this my personal opinion: I need to have stable references in my life. This is what builds my strength. I couldn’t sacrifice every aspect of my life because of love. I would fear I wouldn’t recognize myself.

Dating someone from another caste raises some issues we wouldn’t have with someone from our caste. Money is probably the number one issue. Some people don’t care at all when their partner takes charge of everything and adapt easily to a wealthier environment. Some don’t and take a personal offense when they’re offered this and that. Usually, men are more likely to react like that compared to women. Some of them have the conviction that they should earn more than their lady, so, they live it very hard to be leaded by a wealthier woman.

The second issues are the social codes. If you’re not completely stupid, you will notice that you don’t belong to the same caste as your partner because his/hers has different codes. Good manners for example. I don’t say that because you come from a different caste, you don’t have good manners. I know how to behave in society, yet, I’ve noticed that the very rich people (coming from old and established family) have uber-good manners. Style can also be an example. While most of us rely on brands like H&M, Zara,… to dress, the superior castes rely on their stylist and/or brands like Armani, Gucci,… (but it’s not a synonym of good taste). Then, there are the friends/ entourage. “I dated a guy who came from a wealthy family. His parents were extremely posh and didn’t like me. His friends were spoiled little brats who didn’t consider me very well. I didn’t fit in his world, and that’ s why we broke up” O., 34, said.

Some couples do manage to get over those caste differences, though. We have an incredible ability to adapt to an environment.

So, would you date someone out of your caste?

Bring me to life

Do we need necessarily a relationship to feel alive? Some people would answer negatively to this question. But others would reply yes. I guess it depends on how we consider the others’ attention. People who need everyone’s attention would probably say no to this question. People who need their lover or family’s attention would probably answer positively.

G., 40, who collects men, told me she doesn’t need a relationship to feel alive. “Relationships/commitment bore me to a maximum point. I won’t certainly feel more alive if I date regularly a guy. In fact, I’ve tried sometimes in the past. And I felt I was losing myself in it. I didn’t like it. How come I could feel  more alive in a situation like this? I do enjoy my freedom and my ability to pick the man I want, when I want, with no strings attached. This is what makes me feel alive, but there are plenty other occasions where I can feel alive, for example if I get rewarded for my job, or get social recognition” she said.

I guess this paradigm also depends on how we love ourselves.

N., 30, confided that she enjoys being an independent woman, but she feels that she misses something. “Even if I do enjoy my life with the job I love and all my friends, I have this feeling of emptiness in my love life. If I find the man of my dreams, I know I would feel more alive. It’ s not that I don’t feel alive at all. It’s just that I would feel more” she said.

H., 35, said that she needs to be in a relationship to feel alive, or at least, to feel in love. “When I’m in love, I feel extraordinary. I don’t see the world the same way than when I’m single. I feel over the moon, and I love that feeling” she said.

J., 36, told me she has felt  that way since her ex came back into her life. “We broke up for a stupid reason. And seven months after the break up, I was still not over him. I was just the shadow of myself during that period, crying and not wanting anything. My friends did help me to recover, but in my heart, I knew I wanted him back. And he came back, after eight months. He told me he thought about what went wrong between us, and that he couldn’t live without me even if he tried. Since we got back together, I have this feeling to be alive again. He brought me to life” she said.

So, does a relationship make you feel alive?

Secret sex

One of my friends called me last night to tell me about her tumultuous love life and how she got into trouble with a guy she’s seeing right now. She came to me because she said I won’t judge what she did. She told me she got back with her ex, a man everyone in her entourage has advised her to stay far away from. She added that no one knows about that except me. And that she plans now to keep this “relationship” as secret as possible.

There are many reasons why we want to keep a relationship (or an affair, a much more appropriated word here) secret. The first one is mainly because we try to avoid making any scandal. This happens for example between people already committed elsewhere, who just want to live their passion without hurting their official partner. “I had an affair with a married man while I was myself involved in a relationship. I just fell for him, but I knew it wasn’t going to last, and so did he. So, we agreed to keep our relationship secret. We had so much to lose if this was disclosed to everyone, especially our partners. We had this feeling this relationship only concerned the two of us, and that it was the best decision we could take“ P. , 35, said.

Another reason can be because one of the two partners wants it that way, and imposes this as a condition for the relationship. “He was married, and he made it clear that I should keep it mum about our affair. I was in love with him, and I accepted this. He would take me on weekends far away, and in hotels less comfy than the ones he usually picked for his holidays with his wife, so he was sure he wouldn’t bump into someone that might know him. He would take me for dinner in remote and dark restaurant, where no one could see him. He also wanted me to call him on a special phone number, so his wife couldn’t track back his phone calls. He told me she was really suspicious of something” I., 40, said.

Then, there’s the rational explanation. “He was simply out of my league. We didn’t come from the same background, and we had no common point. It’s just that we were attracted to each other, and that we felt really no inhibitions when we had sex. This was simply amazing. We had a great time, but the truth is we were a little bit ashamed of our partner choice” T., 36, said.

Sometimes, there’s no rational explanation. “I really loved him, but he simply wouldn’t fit into my life. I didn’t see him chatting with my friends or with my family. He was a very intelligent, wealthy, well educated and well known lawyer, while I came from a modest environment. So, I insisted to keep our relationship secret. I knew this relationship couldn’t last, because he would sooner or later find a woman who’s more his type” M., 35, said.

In the case of my friend, like in M.’s case, the explanation lays in the fact they don’t want to face the others’ reaction. Some relationships can create controversy, and not everyone of us is able to deal with it. So, we choose the easy way, aka the secret option.

But living a relationship in secret is not sustainable. Sooner or later, either the truth bursts, or one part of the (illegitimate) couple just breaks the circle because he/she had enough. A secret is always a burden. Otherwise, why is a site like PostSecret so popular?

So, have you ever lived a secret relationship?

A material girl

I had a lunch yesterday with, for once, all the female journalists of my newsroom. It’s quite unusual for us, because we’re always busy in the year and often outside the building for a press trip or a conference/ interview. Most of us have one common point: we all went to the same College to study journalism. So we can relate easily to what the others went through when we were students. In the middle of the conversation, we started to switch to that subject, and we ended up talking about the terror of our studies, Mr. N. One of my colleagues told me she was terrorized to see him when she had to visit him in his office. He didn’t have a good reputation among students. I remember that during my studies, one of my fellow classmates went ballistic during one course because Mr. N.was constantly mocking him during the class. My classmate stood up, went straight to him, and threaten to beat his ass. Everyone was shocked. Some of the students on the front row went after him and told him to calm down. Two days later, he had to publicly apologize to our detestable teacher, and stayed mum for the rest of the year. He failed his sophomore year because of that incident.

When it was my promotion, we had the chance not to have a oral examination with Mr. N. anymore, but my older colleagues weren’t so lucky. One of them told me she failed her year because of this system, and that he was so infect with everyone it was pretty much impossible to succeed. Yet, one student of her promotion managed to score an A with him. How did she succeed? There were rumors circulating about a little horizontal favour. My colleague told me she was flirting heavily with him ( he’s not married). And at that moment, all of my colleagues were just appalled by this, because Mr. N. is objectively not what you can call a handsome man. I just hope for this student Mr. N. was a good shot (but I wouldn’t bet on that, he’s really maniac in real life, sex with him must be terrible).

Another colleague of mine knew also that student. She worked with her as an intern in a radio station during the summer. And she said that she slept with the boss, whom we can also call a true remedy for love. Again, I just hope for this girl that he was a good shot. As a former colleague of mine, he was, well, a little bit more outgoing than my former professor. But I wouldn’t bet he’s a good lover (this just makes me creep). Needless to say that she succeeded her internship either, and that she got a job at the radio station when she finished College.

Personally, I know I couldn’t do that because I can’t sleep easily with people. I need to be in love or heavily drunk. But I don’t see what’s the problem with this girl if she can do this. It’s just a little bit sad she needed to do this instead of betting on her competence.

So, would you sleep to get promoted? 

How’s it gonna be?

Recently, I had a conversation with one of my friends who’s madly in love with a man but isn’t dating him, because they can’t get closer. “I have  tons of brakes that keep me from rushing in and telling him how I feel. I’m afraid it won’t work. I’m afraid we don’t live in the same world. I can’t speak when he’s near me. I feel so useless, and I think he deserves someone better than me” she said. “The problem is that I don’t know how he feels about me. I’m convinced he doesn’t care. But maybe it’s my fault: I keep sending him the wrong signals” she added.

I told her that she should let him make the first move, and she replied he already did, but she pushed him back. “I didn’t know what to reply to what he said” she said. And what did he say? “He was happy to see me” she replied. “It was on the phone, and I just told him nothing“.

For me, this isn’t a sign he’s interested. There are many ways to show your interest for someone, but a simple sentence which has nothing ambiguous isn’t one. I know my friend loves him, and it’s really hard to accept you don’t get your love back. Maybe she should try to overcome her fear and tell him the truth. At least, she will know how he feels about her. It’s the only way (and I know, as a journalist, that you always have to confirm any information, and not just found it on presomptions).

So, how do you show your interest to the person you fancy?

Just like a pill

Apparently, the contraceptive pill isn’t good for us, women, because it makes us choose the wrong partner, and this can lead to infertility. According to a scientist from Liverpool, we tend to choose instinctively our partner with a different genetic make-up, but with the contraceptive pill, our ability to do so is simply disrupted. Worse, when women are already on the pill when they meet their significant other, this could lead to a break up when they decided to stop taking it.

Indeed, one of my friends told me she divorced from her husband after she stopped taking the pill three years later. She said that she didn’t feel attracted to him anymore, and that she had multiple fantasies on other men, but not him. “It was horrible, I felt attracted to many men, but he just left me cold. I was tempted twice to cheat on him, despite I tried anything to reignite the flame. But in the end, I realized it was useless, and I prefered to leave him than to cheat on him”  she said.

Does this mean that we should drop the pill before we pick a partner? That’s a difficult question. One of my friends told me that since she dropped the pill, she’s felt different. “There are times when I feel really horny, and times when I don’t feel any particular envy. Besides, my PMS are much more noticeable now, and I don’t like that much, because I know I’m such difficult during those periods, and hard to bear for my entourage” she says.

What do you think about that?

 

Don’t forget your panties

It’s amazing what you can find on eBay. Take for example this bid. The woman who posted this finally sold only the picture of the crime, because you can’t sell used panties and condoms on this site.

What I particularly like about this ad is that, in the end of the cracking description, she mentioned that she planned to sell her future ex-husband’s Harley Davidson. Because she stole his key. Sweet revenge…

Here’s the object for sale:

She didn’t forget to mention that the panty was way too big and the condom sized small…

Naughty girl

When I was in high school, I remember some of my fellow female classmates carried around a reputation of being a naughty girl. Why? Some of them have dated and slept with most of our male classmates, and they gained rapidly their reputation for being easy. Once, I went to a party with one of them, and after two hours, she begged me to come back to her house. When we arrived there, she burst into tears, and told me she got badly insulted and harassed by a guy she didn’t know. Apparently, he was a friend of one of her multiple ex’s, and he thought that since she had so many ex’s, he had a chance with her, and he insisted. Luckily for my friend, she could manage to escape from him. That night, we couldn’t sleep, and we talked all night long about our experiences. This is when she asked me if I was lesbian, because “I didn’t have many boyfriends unlike the other girls“. When I replied her that I did once kiss a girl, and that I decided on that day I prefer the opposite sex, she seemed really surprised. “But you seem so shy, so wedge, and so blank, how come you could have tested that without everyone noticing it?” she said. I told her that I always hated publicity and gossips about me. I do like evolving in the shadow. And I said to her that, contrary to what people said, I enjoy frolicking with the opposite sex too. It’s just that I didn’t want to have the reputation of a slut, so I carefully chose all my boyfriends far from school, far from town, far from everyone I knew.

More than ten years later, I observe the same situation at work, where some of my colleagues or fellow journalists have won a bad reputation. Journalism is a small world, and everyone knows everyone, so you’d better be at your best behavior, otherwise it will come back to you. Our office whore, for example, is well known in every other newsroom. In an other newsroom where one of my friends works, one of her colleagues has earned such a reputation too, and I’ve seen her getting indecent proposals all the time when we’re invited to seminars (because this spills over among our contacts). She slept with many of the journalists of her medias, and they often talk about how they screwed her and that she’s really a good shot. I don’t envy her at all, and my friends either.

A bad reputation is easy to get, but difficult to get rid of. One of my friends experienced it recently. She got closer to one of her contacts, and she insists they’re just friends. Yet, in her office, everyone is joking about them because my friend has talked too much about their business. And now, she tries to calm down the gossips, but she has the impression she’s fighting for a lost cause. Besides, she shouldn’t listen too much to what people say.

So, do you think it’s difficult to get rid of a bad reputation? And have you ever been affected by a bad reputation?

Midlife crisis

Recently, I was discussing with my sis about nothing and everything, and we ended up talking about people who don’t have a social life. A recent incident with B. reminded me that he also falls into this sad category. My boss, who has known him for years, told me that he probably lost his mind, because he’s never seen him like that before. B., basically, spent his time chatting on the phone with every journalist he knows in my newsroom, but also in other ones. He also joined tons of groups on Facebook to meet new friends. We all wonder if he’s working sometimes…

Just before I met him seven months ago, he had a strange experience at his office. He was working alone in the building (it was on a Saturday) when the police called him to show them the way to the roof. There, a man had unfolded a streamer saying “death to capitalism”. B. and him had a bit of a chat on this curious place, and this event has shocked B. so much that he wrote a column about this incident in one of the biggest newspapers in our country. Since then, my boss says that he’s not acting as himself anymore. When I met him, he told me that he didn’t go out that much, and he seemed really ashamed of it. I didn’t insist that much, but I have the feeling this is the biggest problem of his life right now: he realized he worked hard all of his life to get where he wanted to be, but at a price: no social life. And he tries to change this, but in a very odd way.

When you’re 47, you have a lot of habits and reflex that are hard to change. I know that B. used to be a true terror. I’ve met some of his past students and assistants who told me he used and abused of his power to bring down the others. I’ve met some of his past collaborators who told me he was a douche and an egocentric of first category. When I go interview him, I have the impression to face sometimes the old B. This is probably why he gets on my nerves, and that I’ve never ever had so many difficulties doing my job. Yet, afterwards, he realizes each time he’s gone too far with me, and he apologizes. He can be really nice with me, and the next day extremely mean. I don’t know on which foot to stand with him, this is very disturbing. I’ve talked about him with my friends, and they all agree I should remain distant with him.

My colleagues believe he’s crazy. I don’t think he is, he’s just having a midlife crisis, and tries to change. Maybe he should seek for professional help. I personally hope he would.

So, here’s the question of the day, have you ever dealt with a person affected with this syndrome?